To Walk on Water
by AlexandraLeaving
Summary: You do exactly what she tells you, God help you. A story about Josh.


**Note:** This is sad. It deviates from S5 canon in Josh's age at the time of The Defining Childhood Incident - although Sorkin doesn't specify, I got the impression he was really pretty young, so have disregarded Wells's clown!thing. Hah!

Also, this was going to be slash but didn't work out like that. It is completely gen.

Set probably around _Disaster Relief_, but no spoilers, I think, beyond S2.

* * *

_Did you like to walk on water  
Were you scared  
To be alone_

You wake up when the rain comes. It is only soft rain, and it should not be enough to wake you, it's that elusive pitter-patter that slides in and out of your consciousness, that you don't notice, usually, when you're too busy thinking of your wheels and your deals and your screw-ups.

It is only soft rain, tonight. You know the ways of rain, how rain is so much weaker than it looks. Then it had rained. It had been a cold night. There was some movie on, an old movie. The rain lashed at the windows and you'd said, Joanie, Joanie can we have popcorn? Please? You watched the movie and the rain was loud against the windows. The lady on her screen took her glasses off and her hair came down and then they kissed. How loud the rain is. You can't hear Joanie calling. She comes to find you, she looks kind of pale, she says she can deal with it, Josh, go outside right now. Go now. You do exactly what she tells you, God help you. The rain soaks into your hair and your pyjamas as you run next door. It's a wet night and you're in the first grade and, oh look, the world ended.

But you have also known fine weather and sparkling DC nights, the frost and the stars from when you were young. It's really late when you're finally all through for the day, when you fetch up in a Georgetown bar and some of you take delight in revolting specialty concoctions (that would be CJ, oh yeah), and some of you pretend to be tough guys, serious, sad-eyed guys who drink whiskey and talk kinda low (Toby, of course). And you – well, you haven't really fixed on a drinking style just yet. You're vacillating, a Bahama Mama one night and Port Ellen the next. Who says you have to decide? It's come out right, at last: you're gonna change the world. You said, we'll change the world. CJ's eyes were shining, that night. Which night was that? Toby said, we'll change more than the world, Josh. Everybody wants to change the world, he said. Why limit ourselves? The world alone is – paltry. You said, you said: _Ahhh,_ that long exhalation that almost ended in a giggle, because you were half-drunk and half-mesmerised, half-silly, half-crazy, half-lost, you were five halves in one, you were splintered and whole.

We'll change the world, you said. In your own head there are no speeches, you don't need to rehearse those words again: education, healthcare, teaching, learning, wisdom, care. Those words have all been spoken a million times, they have a million times been written and rehashed and rejuggled to score another yea vote. You used to wake up and listen to the monitors and in your head the President's speeches would play over and over and over, you could feel the cold cement lining your back, still, the warm, flighty, unrecognisable hands. And now, when you stand against walls, you can still feel how hard it was, and how cold, although the night was unusually warm for the time of year, and you think that was in a joke that you half-remember, but there's no one you can ask, because they do not like to talk about it now that you are so-much-better, normal, cured.

There are no speeches. And sometimes, nothing at all. Occasionally your head will shut up for a little; occasionally you can sleep for more than a couple of hours without jerking awake. It's not nightmares, because you hardly have those any more. It's just, it's only that sense that something will happen while you're gone. If everyone would sit in a big room and you could just look at them all day long and all night long. If everyone would do that. If everyone would just do that, maybe then the rain wouldn't wake you.

FIN

Feedback so welcome... I'll wave my pom-poms for you!


End file.
